Baby Guardian?

Discussion is underway regarding the eagerly anticipated Tech II Logistic frigates and you can toy around with them on the Singularity server now. With the Guardian being the overwhelmingly most popular Logistics cruiser, I thought I'd take a look at it's baby brother first, the Deacon. First off, a disclaimer: Whilst the ship is on Singularity and you can fly it, the skill book is not, so the details as you see it here won't take into account up to 25% more capacitor and 25% more armour hitpoints. Keep that in mind when I start with the numbers.

Visually, it's an Inquisitor with a skin. You will notice the thruster animation is a little different, but that's just one of the visual changes to all ships coming in the December release. Fitting is a lot more versatile than the Tech I counterpart, however. Not so versatile as to allow for oversized repair modules, although you could probably shoehorn one on there, but versatile enough that you could oversize the propulsion module, albeit at the expense of significant amounts of tank. So I've gone with what is a pretty unsurprising fit for the sake of exercise. A 400mm plate with decent resists and an afterburner to keep the signature small. It's not terribly fast, cranking out about 900 or so metres per second but with level 5 skills you should have roughly 10K EHP. That's pretty durable for something only 31 meters long. My fitting window shows a little over two minutes of capacitor with everything going; again, at all level 5 that should be closer to three minutes, but the capacitor booster is there for good measure because a medium neut will ruin your whole day without it. The last item is a Signal Amplifier to increase the ECM resistance. The lack of a third mid slot leaves you little choice, really.

I can see these being a pretty valuable bit of kit with a gang of Confessors, Hecates or Svipuls pouring through frigate sized wormholes and taking fights they have no business to take under normal circumstances. Then of course there are those burner missions in HiSec, although I understand people use the Tech I variants just fine in those too. Either way, a welcome addition, but I'm keen to know how you might change the fit out. Let me know.

You know you've been playing EVE too long when...

Some back story is in order here. About twenty five years ago whilst playing in an amateur soccer match I suffered a pretty horrendous injury to my right knee. It was a sliding tackle to take the ball away from my opponent who followed through with his kick anyway, striking me on the outside of the knee with full force. Suffice to say I screamed like a little girl at a 1D concert. Of course, being young and fit I had corrective surgery and recovered quite well, but an addiction to cricket and in particular fast bowling, took its toll further, degenerating the joint over the years, mostly with me totally unaware other than the odd bit of swelling from time to time. Now well into my forties, the knee is a hot mess with no cartilage left and the sight of gravel sends tremors through me as I know a dislocation is only moments away. I've had several surgeries, the most recent only a year ago, and the next one will be a total joint replacement. As you can probably ascertain by now, it's something that weighs on my mind a bit.

Last night I had a dream. In this dream I was lamenting the shocking state of my right knee and how it infringes on my day to day life, how it ended my participation in the sport I love and how I know I'll never run again. Coincidentally, I took up EVE about the same time I quit cricket, so it's very much filled a time void for me over the past few years. Anyway, back to the dream. It's important to remember that when you're in a dream you don't necessarily know you're in a dream. The abstract is real, no matter how nonsensical it might seem. Which brings me to my inspired revelation.

I had the answer to my problems! When I awoke, somehow knowing I was asleep and dreaming but not able to examine the dream skeptically, I decided I was going to Jump Clone into a fresh body. I'll have a brand new pair of knees and life will be great again! This revelation was even accompanied by the thought "Why the fuck didn't I think of this before?".

Well, because when I woke up I realised what I couldn't whilst dreaming. *sigh*

Rolling Heavy

Once again the Viking Burial didn't exactly go as predicted but the exchange was a glaring reminder of how tough it can be to bring down a fleet with decent capital support. It started off messy with our Archon and Boosting pilots getting the times wrong, leaving us scrambling to find a pilot last minute that could use Tech II Triage. Dropbears were good about it, waiting patiently for us to get our collective shit together and sharing their fleet composition with us just in case we thought they weren't coming. Iyokus saw the fleet comp and muttered "hold me" in comms, but we had Haywire and Wrong Hole coming in support of our feeble numbers so a good fight was on the cards.

We started off with the Archon, Phoenix and a few support Battleships about 250km's off of a POS with the sub cap gang waiting on one of our statics. Dropbears seemed to like the look of them more so the fight kicked off on the static making us scramble the capitals to the hole in support of the sub cap fleet. It didn't sound great over comms with the ad hoc FC doing his best to keep the situation under control and before we'd even landed at least three of our friends had succumbed to the firepower that the Dropbears had assembled. They had a well balanced fleet with brick tanked neuting Legions, marauding Proteus' for DPS, strong Guardian support and a couple of Jamgus that seemed to be rather attracted to my Armageddon. Throw in the Bhaalgorn for good measure and they were a tough nut to crack.

The Triage Archon was really the game changer here. Our subcap fleet's four Guardians couldn't outrep the incoming DPS but that all changed with Capital reps on the field. Add to the mix a Phoenix loaded up with target painters and with a C4 Black Hole effect, application of the Citadel Cruise Missiles was pretty damn efficient. I spread my neuts among the Proteus' early, just to stem the DPS until the Jamgus obviously responded to the cries of the capacitor reliant DPS ships. Despite being ECCM fit and with level 5 compensation skills, they still got regular jams on me, forcing me to switch my attention to them and neut their jamming abilities. I deliberately left their Guardians alone, it was the only thing that would keep them in the fight after all, and the FC did a pretty stellar job in switching the DPS when needed to cut down opposing fleet one by one.


The end result, I believe, saw that we didn't lose a ship once the caps landed. It was a great fight but alas, the capitals live to fight another day. There'll be another attempt to see these caps die soon, all things considered I think we owe Dropbears that. After all, there's every chance a few of us will be wearing their tags before long.

Suddenly Buggered

I joined up with Sudden Buggery well over a year ago which is a pretty big deal for me. Finding AU TZ Corporations with good activity levels is tough going; many promise much, few actually deliver. As such, my Corporation history is a who's who of broken promises. But Buggery has delivered thanks to a core group of members who reliably log in and scout for content. Because that's what it's all about in Wormholes, really. Without content creators you're spinning in POS, too paranoid to do much of anything.

Sadly, it seems that time is coming to an end and the usual suspects are at play. Some of our chief content creators have had issues preventing them from committing to much game time and those who are more accustomed to being the flotsam of the corporation leave for greener pastures where they can continue to do little content creation but still whore on kill mails. Of course there are other factors; our US TZ experiment failed some time ago and Wormhole activity in general certainly feels significantly lighter, but the content creation factor is the primary one. Accordingly, we're pulling out of our C4 Black Hole, for the most part, and considering our options. I dare say most of us will continue on to the next stage together, whether that's part of Sudden Buggery or part of a mass movement to an already existing Corporation or Alliance is still up for discussion. But before we get into that there is a grand send off to be had.

Another Viking Burial is on the cards for our capitals in system. An Archon and a Phoenix will die in glorious combat, and hopefully the supporting fleet too, to give our old home the "so long and thanks for all the fish" it deserves. With any luck my next post will be one where I regale you with capital ship loss mails and tales of Battleships being alpha'd of the field by a blap Phoenix. In the meantime, if you're a significantly active Wormhole organisation with space for a few bittervets, hit up Trinkets friend with the details.

The Perfect Crime

Most mornings are pretty brief for me. I log in long enough to update my PI cycles, update Siggy and then log off to start my work day. Sometimes however, you need to make time for opportunities that come up.

A K162 connection from a C5 and probes on D-Scan told me there were actives in system. With a HiSec connection only a few jumps from a market hub I thought there may be the chance to grab a fat hauler before I shuffled off to work. So I waited on the connection with an Astero and at a nearby safe with a Rook. Minutes later there was wormhole fire and two Dominix class Battleships warp off to a combat site. Slightly unexpected, but I'll take it were I can find it. I follow them of course and do some quick kill board research to see how they're fit. A recent loss confirms they are remote repair set-ups with ECCM Casters, warp scramblers and webs. Moreover, the Tech II Ogres they had on the field indicated they were probably pretty well skilled, too. I put the word out for possible back up but no one was answering, the line was dead, I was on my own.

I'm pretty sure I don't have the resources to survive this engagement so I start trying to think of alternatives to disrupt their farming when a Noctis suddenly lands on grid and drops a tractor unit. Now there's a soft target I can exploit if I time it just right. So I bookmark the tractor unit for my Rook as the Noctis warps off to a safe and cloaks up. The Domis clean up the remainder of the site in short  order and the Noctis exits warp right on top of the MTU. As soon as I see the Domis aligning to another site, I initiate warp on the Rook. I landed a few seconds after they have left, scrammed the Noctis and start grinding it down. I jammed it for good measure in case it had ECM drones it felt like using and held on surprisingly long in structure due to the damage control and bulkheads it had fitted. But not long enough, however, with the Domis landing right on top of me as the Noctis went pop. But it was all for naught, having already aligned to a celestial I was in warp before they could even begin their lock cycle. Having paid their dues for farming in my system, I figure they can run the other three sites, I'm running late for work already.Fly dangerous o7

Mystery Depot

Lately I've been too lazy to run the sites in my C3 and I don't envision things changing with some pretty A grade gaming titles on the near horizon. On the plus side, it's given me some ganking opportunities that I don't normally see. There's been some Drakes and of course the Kronos last week but since then it's been kind of quiet. I had some PI housekeeping to do tonight so I logged in right after down time and as I am habitually D-Scanning on my warp to POS I notice a mobile depot that wasn't there an hour or so ago. Curious.

I combat scan it out and find it's owner is still logged off but I kind of got the feeling he'd be back for it. So I got to updating Siggy and ran a locate on the owner whilst researching his kill history. He was logged off in HiSec but only a few jumps from my static and his killboard was quite good with the exception that he hadn't made a kill since 2011 and he was in a one man corporation as of yesterday. Something tells me this is a bought account.

Armed with that knowledge, he logs on a few minutes later. Keeping eyes on the HiSec with a Stratios and the Depot with an Astero he dutifully jumps into system and off to a C2 connected to me. I warp the Stratios over to it and sure enough, two minutes later he's back through and en route to the depot. I was in a bit of a spot here; the Astero I was quite sure could tank the Tengu but there was no way I was going to break his tank either. I also couldn't re-ship as it was in D-Scan range of the POS so I decided to try my luck and wait for him to run sites. Fortunately, he did just that, choosing a combat anomaly well beyond D-Scan range of my POS. So I reshipped to my HAM Legion, specifically designed to tank Sleepers and gank site runners, warped off to a safe and sent the Stratios in for initial tackle. The Stratios is shield fit with neuts, it's a little light on the tank for this job, but it'll do just fine until the Legion lands.

From there everything went like clockwork .There was no mobile tractor unit to deal with and I managed to tackle him with only one Sleeper on the field. For once the loot fairy wasn't a total cow, either. Now I just have to wait 48 hours to crack open the mystery depot and see if there are any goodies inside. =]

You've got a shitty Poker Face

Most evenings when I get home from work I log in at POS in my Astero and get to updating Siggy. Before I could do much of anything I was hailed in local. For those unaware, talking in local in Wormholes is like talking about Fight Club, apparently this guy didn't get the memo. Anyway, I was cordial enough and put eyes on the only way in or out of the system just to get a look at him. It was at this point he informed me he was leaving anyway and D-Scan reported he was in a Kronos somewhere. Curiosity piqued! Moments later, he logs off. Spider senses start tingling...

As I had about a dozen combat sites in system I was pretty confident I knew this guy's game. On the flip side, he knew Apex Bex was a resident in system so I had to make it obvious I was leaving and have an alternative waiting for him when he logged back in. Fortunately, my Sudden Buggery alt wasn't too far away so I made best speed in a Covert Neuting Legion and parked him in a safe, waiting for my quarry to log in. I didn't have to wait long. Only fifteen minutes later the Kronos pilot logs in and I take my time extracting Apex Bex from the Wormhole in another Legion so the eyes he has on the HiSec can see him leave. I left the HiSec system all together and had to wait about another ten minutes for the Kronos to resume his Sleeper farming.

I positioned the neut Legion at a pounce and waited for him to finish the site, warping in on the wreck he was tractoring when the last Battleship went down. Uncloaking just as I was leaving warp he didn't even react and was scrammed and neuted instantly. By this time my HAM Legion had jumped gate and was in warp to the entry when, yet again, my target pipes up in local.

I haven't ransomed anyone in ages, not since the days of capital bumping in Mai, and I'm not so poor as to need the ISK so his offer was not only piss poor, but I'm pretty sure he was holding out on me. It's about now that the HAM Legion landed and added a little more neuting pressure and the DPS required to finish the Kronos. He went down pretty fast without his X-Type repairer going and the loot fairy laughed and laughed and laughed. Bitch.